Who Is James Craig?

            My VIP for this week is James Craig, the Detroit Police Chief. When asked by Tucker Carlson on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” why Detroit has not had violent protests like other cities throughout the nation, Chief Craig replied, “We don’t retreat here in Detroit.”

            While other Democrat-led cities have suffered lawlessness, burning, looting, and general destruction, Detroit has been spared. Where police officers in other cities have disappeared, Detroit police officers stand firm with support from the mayor, police chief, and community.

            Detroit has not been free of controversy. In July 2020, 20-year-old Hakeem Littleton was killed in an officer-involved shooting, and protests rocked the city. However, Craig quickly released video showing that Littleton opened fire on the officers who were trying to arrest him. Then the officers fired back in self-defense. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan commended the police chief for releasing the video, and the protests quieted down once the video was shown. Craig explained that the citizens of Detroit are “fed up with these radical protests.” He made it clear that he meant the riots and not the peaceful protests.

I’m not talking about these peaceful protests… [I mean] these misguided radicals that have tried to incite violence in our city… They said, “We’re not going to put up with it.” And so, we got a couple of things. We got a great police department, great leadership, but we have a community that stands with us and said, “enough is enough.”

So, when you talk about what’s different here, we have a city that has stood together and oh, by the way, I know there’s a lot of conversation about the mayors in some of these big cities… Our mayor stands with this police chief, stands with this police department [and] we are not going to tolerate this uptick in violence. That’s key.

            There is the answer. Detroit officials and community say that they will not tolerate destruction of their city. There is unity between the mayor and the police chief. There are good police officers. They made their decision early, and they stuck with it. There are a lot of cities that could take some lessons from Detroit.